10 Viewing PDF in Various Browsers

This section enables the business user to view PDF’s in different browsers used commonly like IE (Internet Explorer), Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome. There may be case where the user might not be able to open the empty forms for different services from their respective Service Landing Page.

This problem can be resolved by changing few settings resulting in PDF view compatibility with different browsers and PDF can be opened in any browser.

Internet Explorer

By default, PDFs can be viewed in this browser. In case PDF is not opening in this browser, following are the steps to enable the PDF reading in IE (Internet Explorer 8 and later).

Open IE and choose Tools-> Manage Add-ons.

Under Add-on Types, select Toolbars and Extensions.

In the Show menu, select All add-ons.

In the list of Add-ons, select Adobe PDF Reader.

Click the Enable button to view PDF in Chrome browser.

Output

Following screen was obtained on selecting pdf link, after making above mentioned changes in IE. The form opened in the browser window successfully.

Mozilla Firefox

By default, a built-in PDF viewer is available with Firefox. But without activating right PDF plugin, the PDF will open just as shown in Image 1.

Click the Menu button and choose Options.

Select the Applications panel.

Select Portable Document Format (PDF) in the list.

Click on the drop-down arrow in the Action column for the above entry. The Action entry will show Preview in Firefox if the built-in PDF Viewer is being used.

To use an external application to view PDF files, select the appropriate entry for the PDF application, such as Use Adobe Reader.

To use a plugin to view PDF files in Firefox, select Use PDF plugin name (in Firefox).

Then follow below steps to enable the PDF plugin:

Click the menu button and choose Add-ons. The Add-ons Manager tab will open.

In the Add-ons Manager tab, select the Plugins panel.

Select your PDF plugin.

Select Always Activate in its drop-down menu.

Output

After making the above changes in Firefox, select the PDF link. The form will be opened successfully in the browser window.

Google Chrome

PDF viewing has been a task with this browser. The reason being, Chrome and Acrobat no longer being compatible. The Acrobat/Reader plug-in for Google Chrome is based on the Netscape Plug-In API (NPAPI) technology. Google announced that in April 2015 NPAPI plug-in support would be disabled by default in the Google Chrome web browser, with an override capability for advanced users. In September 2015, NPAPI support in the Google Chrome web browser was removed entirely.

Hence, while it is not possible to view PDFs in Chrome browser directly, they can be viewed in external applications like Adobe Reader as the browser arranges for a smooth download option. There are few steps for setting the plugins in Chrome browser to view PDFs in external application.

In the Chrome address bar, type: chrome://flags

Scroll down the list and go to Enable PPAPI Win32k Lockdown. Windows.

From the dropdown select PDF only.

Re-launch Chrome.

In the Chrome address bar, type chrome://plugins.

Disable the Chrome PDF Viewer.

Exit and re-launch Chrome again.

Output

After making above changes in the Chrome, click on pdf link. The form opened in the browser window successfully.